Aperture or Lightroom?

[naserke]

I bought my first DSLR Nikon D90 last week. I have no experience with DSLR but am regular reader of DPS since last year. I am reading about my new camera and watching videos to understand all its functions. But I need advise on which post processing software i should use. I own a Mac and have a option between Aperture and Lightroom.
Please advise me on which one I should use. Also, which one supports keeping library on an external drive.

[alex3410]

look for trials of both and see which one your prefer that would be the best way of doing it.

also look at the Gimp
http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/

which is free but does not have a library feature.

i use light room, gimp & photoshop, and light room does support external hard drive libraries

[kirbinster]

I know two photo people that use the MAC and have both switched over to Lightroom. I have no experience with Aperture, but love Lightroom.

[Nicole]

Download the trial versions of both and see which one suits you better.

I never got into Aperture, but when I finally figured out what Lightroom could do I was sold. Aperture 2 is better than the original, but I still like Lightroom 2 better. All things considered they do pretty much the same thing so I find it's more of a decision about which one feels better.

[FDCPR]

I agree with everyone's comments here, download the trial versions and see which you like best. That said, I am an Aperture 2 user and it is a love, hate relationship. For me it makes simple editing much faster, and when detail work is needed PS is used. I would think that any detailed editor could be use the same way as you determine what to open the image with for external editing, GIMP or others. You also can use an external drive with Aperture, not sure about LR. Now for the hate part, I shoot in Raw primarily using Nikon equipment and there is no problem. I also use a Panasonic P&S using Raw capture that is not supported by Aperture. Recently I was given a Sigma camera, same results, Raw not supported in Aperture. If you have other cameras or may have in the future I think Adobe is doing a better job of supporting the various file types than Aperture. I may switch shortly to LR, but I am very comfortable with Aperture and really don't want to. If you are capturing .jpg files then there is no problems, but I think you should keep your options open to try other file formats such as Raw.